Gentle reminder that the World Health Organization considers both forced restraints and involuntary hospitalization to be human rights abuses, and is advocating for those interventions to be banned globally:
I saw your comment suggesting we call the police (not sure if you deleted it? It’s not appearing anymore). But what would you expect the police to do? We staff peace officers at my hospital. They assist with restraining patients.
So your solution to nurses not restraining patients is to… instead have police restraint patients? Calling the police to press charges would not lead to the patient going to jail if that’s what you’d hope for— they still require medical treatment. They are instead handcuffed or soft restrained to the bed for the duration of their medical treatment, which imo is worse than restraining someone momentarily during a crisis until their treatment is complete and they regain their impulse control.
Restraints are not a form of retaliation— my goal is never to punish my patients, but to protect the safety of myself, my colleagues, and the patient themselves.
I will agree that restraints are sometimes used unnecessarily, but to state that forced restraints are always abusive or are a form of retaliation, rather than protective for staff and patients, is incorrect and perpetuates the idea that nurses should just tolerate physical abuse by patients, even in cases where the risk of physical harm is moderate to severe.
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u/Old_Glove9292 3d ago
Gentle reminder that the World Health Organization considers both forced restraints and involuntary hospitalization to be human rights abuses, and is advocating for those interventions to be banned globally:
https://www.who.int/news/item/10-06-2021-new-who-guidance-seeks-to-put-an-end-to-human-rights-violations-in-mental-health-care